...After a day of antiwar protests on the University of Texas campus and in Austin, I found myself booked as a late-night guest on NPR's all-day coverage of the war to be interviewed by Scott Simon, the popular host of Weekend Edition on Saturdays.

I knew something about Simon's politics from an essay he published in the Wall Street Journal a month after 9/11. In that piece he explained that he had become a Quaker and pacifist during the antiwar movement of the 1960s but now supported Bush's war on terrorism. His prose at the time was indistinguishable from the president's rhetoric:...Instead of accepting the assumptions built into his pro-war framework, I challenged them. I agreed that Hussein was a totalitarian thug, but argued that had little to do with why the Bush administration had pressed for a war. I talked of U.S. plans for empire and the longstanding U.S. project of controlling the Middle East as a source of strategic power in the world. I referred to the Bush administration's own National Security Strategy document (http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html ), which lays out a plan for U.S. dominance, and the U.S. military Space Command�s plans for controlling space (http://www.gsinstitute.org/resources/extra... ). With each point I made, Simon returned to some version of, Yes, but certainly you must acknowledge ��

But I never did acknowledge what he wanted me to -- not out of obstinacy but because I thought he was wrong. When it came time to take callers, Simon didn't invite me to stay on the line, even though it was clear that he and I could have engaged in a lively exchange with listeners. After going off the air, I listened to the callers and was amused by the way Simon tried to spin my comments and put back in place the proper pro-war framework...

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